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September 15, 2014

Happy Craft Book Month! I hope you've been enjoying all the wonderful projects and posts you've seen so far as part of this little celebration. I love the see the wide range of projects that people are tackling and the diverse selection of craft books they come from. I've spotted a few new-to-me books in the group that I will definitely be checking out soon.

This is my third year participating in the blog hop for Craft Book Month, and I'm honored that Lindsay at Craft Buds asked me to participate. Initially, I had a book and project in mind. I didn't own the book, so I requested it from the library and sat down with it. After a few days of mulling it over, I decided to set that book and project aside -- I just wasn't feeling inspired. And that's okay, right? Instead, I picked a book from my own collection, Emily Cier's Scrap Republic. This book published in 2011, so it's not new on the scene, but it's not to be missed. My non-quilty friend Jessica bought me this book for my birthday years ago; she'd seen it at the bookstore, thought it was cool, and thought I might enjoy it. At the time, I loved flipping through the book, but I just never got around to making any of its scrap-tastic projects. And so Scrap Republic sat on my bookshelf, forgotten and unappreciated, until a few weeks ago.

There are 8 cool, colorful projects in this book. One thing I love about these designs is that they look far more complicated than they truly are. I chose to make the Volume quilt, thinking it would be a great way to both sort and use up a lot of my scraps. I like that Emily provides a second option for each project, calling it "Solace for the Scrapless." It's a clever way to change up a pattern depending on the fabrics you have on hand.

I cut many more scraps than I needed (which means there's another Volume quilt in my future, for sure), and once I got to work chain-piecing and putting the pieces up on my design wall, I couldn't stop. This quilt is addicting. Consider my Instagram activity as evidence:

As you can see (I hope), I chose to put my lighter shades to the left and let the color intensify as the eye moves to the right. I had a lot of fun picking my scraps for each section and positioning them so the color saturation moved the right way.

Thanks to some other projects in my queue lately, I wasn't able to completely finish this quilt in time for today's post, so I'm sharing the finished quilt top now and I'll share the finished quilt shortly. I have a plan for this one and can't wait to see it finished, gifted, and enjoyed. And I'm confident that I'll be picking up Scrap Republic again for more projects in the future.

2014 Craft Book Month Blog Hop!

I've teamed up with some fabulous bloggers who will be showing off their projects made from craft books, all month long!

Link Up

9/1-9/30: Link up your craft book project at Craft Buds from your blog, instagram or Flickr account, and enter to win prizes. To participate in the month-long contest, just link up any project you've made from a pattern in a craft book. That easy! You'll tell us a little about the book, the project, how you personalized it, etc. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, October, 1!

Rules

1) One entry per person.

2) Your craft book project must have been completed in 2014.

3) Create a new blog post, instagram or Flickr photo (dated September 1, 2014 or later) and link back to Craft Buds/Craft Book Monthin your post or photo description (tag #craftbookmonth for instagram). In your post or photo description, make sure to list the craft book you used and provide a link if possible.

4) All winners chosen via Random.org. Some prizes available to international winners, so please join us!

Prizes

Visit Craft Buds and link up your craft book project during the window of Sept 1-30 and you'll automatically be entered to win some fantastic prizes from the Craft Book Month sponsors!